Virginia Festival of the Book

It's coming! This year's Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville is March 21-25 and, as usual, there's quite a schedule. Here is a partial list, taken from the Festival's website, although looking at the actual schedule I saw many other names I recognized:

Among the participating authors are novelists Lee Smith (On Agate Hill), Howard Norman (Devotion), Luis Alberto Urrea (The Hummingbird’s Daughter), Mark Childress (One Mississippi), Donald McCaig (Canaan), Caroline Preston (Gatsby’s Girl), Mameve Medwed (How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life), Louis Bayard (The Pale Blue Eye), Ravi Howard (Like Trees, Walking), Laura Dave (London is the Best City in America) and short story writers David Lynn (Year of Fire), R.T. Smith (Uke Rivers Delivers), and Steve Watkins (My Chaos Theory).

Nonfiction authors include war letters editor Andrew Carroll (Grace Under Fire, Operation Homecoming), Jamestown archaeologist William M. Kelso (Jamestown, The Buried Truth), journalist Charles Bowden (Inferno), astronaut Tom Jones (Skywalking), reading advocate Jim Trelease (The Read Aloud Handbook), and anorexia memoirist Aimee Liu (Gaining). A special panel on “graphic nonfiction” will include comics editor Sid Jacobson and illustrator Ernie Colón (creators of The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation) and graphic biographer Andy Helfer (Ronald Reagan, Malcolm X).

Thriller and mystery authors appearing during the Friday, March 23-Saturday, March 24 Crime Wave schedule of programming include Lee Child (The Hard Way), Tess Gerritsen (The Mephisto Club), Laura Lippman (What the Dead Know), and George Pelecanos (The Night Gardener).

The poetry program will feature readings from Rei Berroa (Book of Fragments), Michael Chitwood (From Whence), Stephen Cushman (Heart Island), Gary Geddes (Flying Blind), Kimiko Hahn (The Narrow Road to the Interior), Judith Hall (Three Trios), Michael McFee (Shinemaster), Bino Realuyo (The Gods We Worship Live Next Door), David Wojahn (Interrogation Palace), and a reading from the Best New Poets series.

Lee Smith, Hal Crowther (Gather at the River), and Earl Hamner (Generous Women) will host the annual Authors Reception at Carr’s Hill, the UVa President’s home. Tickets are open to the public ($25) and are available online.